A year ago I predicted that FriendFeed will be very big! (Facebook bought it recently for a large 7 figure number).

2 Months ago I was thrilled to hear about (and get a developer account to review it) Google Wave.

Today I heard that Google is opening wave to non-developers users (power users that is) to give it a play ground review.

Today, I also predict that Google Wave will be the new big thing for the next 2 years at least.

Today, I had many friends asking me for a Google Wave invites, to them, I say: Sorry guys, I have zero invites to give, but just wait a week or 2 and you will get your own. Just make sure you have a Google account (and who doesn’t nowadays?!)

What is Google Wave?

In short: Google Wave is an open source server-side software platform for real-time collaboration and communication between any number of individuals. Utilizing the latest HTML 5 standard, Wave runs in any current compliant browser. (Watch the very long video above) (or watch the very short video preview below).

Many of you asked what happened to the Twitter addict I once was. The answer is: Wave, new Wahol, and project ‘W’ took all my time for the last 2 months!

Once you have Wave, send me a “wave” 🙂 you know my name! Hint: Same as my Twitter name: @GuruOfSales

P.S.: Reason I had Wave as a developer, is that it’s open source, and I am working with a team on an eBay/Paypal app to be used in Wave 😉

Did you want to setup a video conference call but wasn’t sure which software the other party is using?

I can tell you exactly how long it will take you to setup everything so you can chat using video online with any person. 63 minutes!

That’s how long it took me on the phone (My call duration was 1:03:22) to a friend in another state just to start the video chat, download and setup skype, install the new driver for your cam because it didn’t support MAC computers, setup your mic (Her mic was muted the entire time!) setup your speakers source… ETC.

Sounds familiar?

What if I told you that on June 13th of 2009 while I was waiting patiently to snag my Facebook username (facebook.com/GuruOfSales) Pete Cashmore of Mashable.com along with 2 friends of his (one of which was actually in facebook’s HQ for the event) were all doing a video chat room on mashable, and you know how long it took them to set it up? 22 seconds! Not because they all had their cams already setup, not because they all knew how to use skype, but simply they created the chat room using the service that I heard of that night: TinyChat

At TinyChat.com all you need is just a twitter account, name your room, login to twitter and you have a high quality video audio and text chat, it took me 22 seconds to setup the entire room, didn’t even have to promote it, people just jumped in, how did they know? A tweet and a facebook status update was sent instantly to my friends and followers with the link to the room, even more, I had the option of tweeting every chat line I enter, which I think is a neat feature.

However, the coolness doesn’t stop there, many readers of this blog will love the next option: Screencast your desktop, NICE! With one click you can record or live stream (screencast) your desktop or website tuturial in a very high video quality, but for this option you will have to pay for the pro membership, and you will not believe this, it’s only $14.95 to get pro, Holly Cow! An entire $14.95 (Just being sarcastic), a screen cast or recording software like Camtasia will cost you $100’s of dollars, mean while this cool service will do almost the same job with the addition of live casting chat voice and text, I mean… come on, my Flickr pro Cost the double of that!

Around this time last year I ‘Updated’ my old twitter account saying the following:

Prediction: “What Are You Doing?” will be the most asked question of the year in Times magazine. Thanks to Twitter!

It did happen, the question is asked millions of times every day on Twitter web, then I listened to a podcast with @EV from Twitter and when he was asked what it’s called to update your twitter feed? is it ‘to tweet’? He said I guess that’s what’s everyone calling it I guess. But secretly and behind the scene he went on and trademarked the verb ‘Tweet’ to be used ‘to tweet’ my status instead of ‘to update my status on twitter’. Cool 🙂

As of today, if you look on the top right corner of your twitter page (Twitter Web) you will see that your ‘updates’ are now your ‘Tweets’ as in the photo above. I also heard that twitter will be integrating the term ‘tweet’ throughout the site and some API apps.

Also interesting to know is that the AP Stylebook has declared ‘to tweet’ as legitimate grammar.

After today, I no longer have to correct peeps when they say: I will twitter you back! it is now official ;-p

This is the first article in the ‘While I was Gone‘ series and one of many about the cool Google products and changes.

I’m starting the series with a great product from Google that was launched recently, Google Profiles.

A Google profile is simply how you present yourself on Google products to other Google users. It allows you to control how you appear on Google and tell others a bit more about who you are. With a Google profile, you can easily share your web content on one central location. You can include, for example, links to your blog, online photos, and other profiles such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and more. You have control over what others see. Your profile won’t display any private information unless you’ve explicitly added it.

You can also allow people to find you more easily by enabling your profile to be searched by your name. Simply set your existing profile to show your full name publicly.

Google also allow your profile to become featured on Google.com’s search results, for example, Google my name right now ‘Alex Mohamed’ and you will see the last section of the first page on the results displayibng my Google profile Photo and link to the profile.

Best way to learn more about Google s from the example below:

In the screen shot above you will find the following from my profile:

1. My photo, name and my job title.

2. send me a message without knowing my email address (Unless you are in my Gmail contacts list), other wise this is great to connect with people minus the spam mail.

3. This section of the profile will link you to every possible profile of mine that is online (at least the ones I remembered 🙂 ) such as facebook and twitter. This section is great for people that’s as busy online as myself, it also saves me the dozen of links that I used to have on the top right corner of this blog to connect with me outside of this blog and even more (Thanks for the YouTube subscriptions guys).

4. Another section for more about myself, includes a bio, education, jobs, etc.

5. They didn’t forget how cool I am on Flickr, so they link to my most recent photos uploaded to flickr 😉

Also there is a section on the lower side of the page of places that I have been to on a mini Google maps version, that will even show my reviews about the good eats and restaurants that I have visited and reviewed (Nice eh?!)

On my side, I will post the link to my profile on this blog to be as a permanent ‘connect with me’ link so people can find most of my online profiles easier, and I may include it on my twitter account as my URL instead of this blog 🙂

I was shocked and very sad that MJ, an icon that changed my and many others lives, was gone at only 50 years old.

Very sad!

But it didn’t stop there, Twitter was noticeably slow for hours after the news, I read many tweets of people saying that it’s confirmed yet, I sent many text messages to close friends and 9 out of 10 said it’s not true! CNN didn’t say so!

Then to my other shock, I go see my neighbor (Who worked online for over 10 years) that says to me, I just checked CNN and it’s not true!

Now that’s a person who made living online for the past 10 years, yet again, he still rely on old fashion media! Wasn’t the Iran election enough to prove to him and everyone else that CNN is not the sh*t anymore?!

Really!

Who should I believe? People’s tweets, TMZ.com, the LA Times website, or just some failing news channel that’s always waiting to the last moment to make sure they don’t send fake news!

I am not resting my case just yet, and I am truly saddened by the events and the lose of a great artist, but the case between Twitter and CNN is not over yet, and you know I will be writing more about it very soon.

RIP Michael Jackson.

Update: I have to add the following, although I stick with my point, but I also thought about the people that didn’t want to believe it at first (My Neighbor as an example) was just for the fact that they loved Michael Jackson, and their brains was set to not believing such great performer and at some cases their hero just died out of no where. With that being said, I say that this is life and it will just go on, and for Michael, he is still alive forever in the form of his music and performance.

Within the last 2 days I heard about 2 new services that is very useful so I thought I would share.

The first one is We Follow (wefollow.com) and it’s been called the new Twitter yellow pages.

The service is a tag based service and shows the top twitter user on each tag/category based on their followers number, so it’s a directory made by the people for the people.

We Follow was created by non other than Digg founder and power tweeter @kevinrose.

I (@GuruOfSales) made 2nd position under #sales and the 51st position under #blogger, not bad for the “Guru” of “sales” 🙂

You can add yourself to be in the directory by tweeting the following:

The second service I heard about it this morning when I got a @reply from @ShaneGibson ( something about the Canadian water makes Canadians really smart!) That he made second after me under the category “sales” in all of Twitter. Woot! to us 🙂

I think that this is the first time I’m blogging on a Sunday in quite a long time, but I had this post drafted a while back and I did promise a friend to post it as soon as I have my Twitter background up and running so everyone can see it.

My Friend is Hugh Briss, and one of his companies is www.TwitterImage.com (Hugh also offer other cool designing services like the new service for YouTube backgrounds, blog skins and even logos).

I have first came to know Hugh through following some of my all time power twitter users, I noticed they had some brand new Twitter backgrounds, they all had one thing in common: A tiny logo somewhere on the design that says: Made By “TwitterImage.com”

So I headed over to TwitterImage.com and found out all of Hugh’s examples and clients, I think I browsed his samples for over an hour that day, they are very impressive.

Hugh had a very smart business approach, he offered a free background design for any power twitter user (back then the cap was 3000 followers) in exchange of adding a small note that it was made by TwitterImage.

A very clever marketing strategy, that made me apply for one, and I knew it would be a while to get it done since I applied right before Christmas time, and I was right. It took Hugh and his team about a month, and I am assuming it was because of the huge respond he probably got from his smart marketing strategy.

You can still get a free premium design if you have over 5000 users (That’s the cap at the time I’m writing this) or you can buy the same design for just $100 directly from his site.

You have probable seen it already, it’s done and will be published within a couple of days, in case you have missed it, it’s a new Facebook Home page.

The purpose of the new update is simple, to make it easier to connect with friends and family, like Friend Feed’s live stream will be on the new homepage, this is great as you won’t have to refresh the homepage to get new friends updates. (cool!)

Also with the publisher on the home page, you won’t need to go to your profile’s page to share anything, so basically you can write on your wall, share photos and videos etc. from your homepage.

Requests are now minimized on the top, a one liner links to your requests page. (neat!)

Last but not least, your highlights (Birthdays and events) looks more clear and organized than before.

It looks like it won’t take long for users to get used to the new Facebook homepage, unlike the major changes that happened last year that I am still getting questions about whether offline from my friends or online on the free help forum for Facebook that I am running here. (Go ahead and ask your questions there).

If you’re not following me on Twitter yet, do so by going here.Want to be my friend on Facebook, do so by going here.And if you are not an RSS subscriber yet, do so by going here.

History is being made as I am writing this.
As the first African American president, Barack Obama The United Sates Elect-President (At the time of writing this) with high expectations for the nation and the world for that matter.
CNN has partnered with Facebook to stream live the entire event, not only that, but also sharing your opinion though your facebook status update which live streamed right next to the video stream.

You can also catch the inauguration on Hulu or Joost live streaming by clicking on each image below:

or

If you’re not following me on Twitter yet, do so by going here.
And if you are not an RSS subscriber yet, do so by going here.

Note: 3 Hours of video/audio classes on digsby are available for free on Wahol.com

Ever since I have moved from using Trillian messenger into using digsby, my online life has changed.
To make it simple: Digsby is a universal IM and email application, in other words, you can use your existing IM account (Yahoo IM, AOL’s AIM, Google talk, MSN/Live, ICQ, Jabber or even facebook chat) and use it all within one easy (And light waight) window, and here is the best part: You can use multible accounts from the same providor at the same time. For example: You have 2 Yahoo accounts, one for personal use and one for your business, you can use both accounts at the same time and be logged into both instead of logging off one account to log in to the new one.

You can even open multible chats within one chat window, kinda like tab browsing in Firefox. Cool!

Another cool feature is that it will allow you to combine multible buddies if one person have more than one account (For example: one account on Yahoo IM and a Google talk account) you can combine them both to appear as one.

Not satisfied!

There are 2 more great features:

1. You get email notifications from your Gmail, MSN/Hotmail/Live, Yahoo mail, AOL email, IMAP and pop accounts. And you can reply directly from digsby!

2. (And that’s my favorite featuere) Social networking: Stay connected without having to go to your browser on facebook, myspace, twitter or linkedIn.

Digsby will keep you updated with your friends new status on facebook, or your naighbor’s mood change on myspace or your replies on twitter, and of course you can update your twitter status from digsby or @ reply to someone, or directly open your friends wall page on facebook.

Oh, besides the fact that I appear online on facebook almost 24/7 (when I am actually only on digsby), Digsby is truly universal, you will create one account on digsby during your first install, then if you travel or change computers, all you have to do is to sign in your digsby account and all the rest of your accounts that’s stored from before will load and log in automaticaly.

There are many other feature that you can find here. Or you can Join Wahol.com for free and learn even more by video and audio.

Digsby developers are always updating the software with new features, I have personally requested to add an RSS reader feature through their feedback requests, I also requested to have it as an Android mobile app so I can use it on my phone, there is also digsby for facebook application that is already published and ready for you to download in your facebook account.